You can prompt students to retrieve an important piece of information, explain a concept as applied in a different context, or consider how they might use a new skill in their practice. These activities take mental energy, and students are likely to just move along without doing them unless you grab their attention and make them interactive. But, how?

Brightspace accessible templates to the rescue! Two simple strategies for engaging your learners in active mental processing of the content in Brightspace include using the Click n Reveal Interactions and the Flip Card Interactions. You can find these under Select a Document Template when you choose Create a File.

If you would like help using one of these templates or any others, book a meeting with an instructional designer.

Sample Click n Reveal Interaction

Ask your students a knowledge check question, apply the reading content to a new context, or reflect on personal relevance. The learner sees your response when they click the Find out button.

Sample Flip Card Interaction

Provide your students with virtual flashcards by adding a term on one side of the card and a definition on the other. Students reveal the definition when they hover their mouse over the card.

In a post-truth information landscape, it is increasingly difficult to distinguish credible information from cherry-picked facts and polished, convincing interpretations, especially as generative AI makes sophisticated-sounding misinformation easier to produce and harder to detect. Now more than ever, our students need to be able to question the veracity of claims and follow evidence back to its source. Citation practices are a foundational skill for doing exactly that, yet we often assign them without explanation.

This is where the “curse of expertise” can work against us. Having long internalized both the importance of citations and the logic behind their formatting, we may forget what it was like before we understood these things. What feels obvious to us as academics is not obvious to students encountering scholarly conventions for the first time.

Consider being intentional about making the purpose visible. Explain to your students why you require citations, how a standardized format makes it possible for anyone, including them, to quickly locate and verify a source, and how these same habits of source-checking apply to the information they encounter in their everyday lives. Connecting citation practice to real-world information literacy can transform it from a formatting chore into a genuinely transferable skill.

For more ideas about integrating information literacy into your courses, reach out to an 91��ɫ libarian or check out:  from the Ohio State University.

If you ask your students to use a tool or input their data or intellectual property into a tool that is not available on the MyCampus Portal, please ensure that it has received approval from IT who will investigate these issues for you. You can submit a Technology Review Request by following these steps:

1. Go to the  on the IT services website.
2. Click the big Start a Technology Review Request button to access the form.
3. Fill out the fields to the best of your ability and click Submit.
4. You will receive an email confirmation with a link to your IT ticket.
5. Keep an eye out in your email for updates to this request as IT investigates the accessibility of the tool and the data and privacy features.
6. Do not use the tool with students or their work until you receive approval from IT.

If you need assistance with this, please reach out to CTL at umpi-ctl@maine.edu.

1. Ensure that you have read and signed letters in Accommodate and are providing the approved accommodations.
2. Use the Ally Course Accessibility Report under the Tools menu to identify and prioritize issues.
3. Use Grackle Docs under the Extensions menu to identify and fix issues in your Google files.
4. Use the Accessibility tools on the Review tab in Office to identify and remediate issues.
5. Start with the major barriers first, such as scanned pdfs, as these are completely inaccessible.
6. ��������available resources to learn how to make content accessible.
7. Use the 15-minute rule: if you are spending more than that to fix an issue, submit a support request.
8. Set aside time for this work.
9. Reach out with questions by emailing umpi-ctl@maine.edu.

Strategies for reassembling parts into the whole include:

• Concept Mapping: Use visual maps to show relationships between ideas. For example, students place key concepts in nodes and draw labeled connections between them. This encourages them to think about how concepts relate, not just what they are. Concept mapping supports schema formation, helping students organize knowledge structures.
• Interleaving: Instead of teaching topics in isolated blocks, mix related topics during practice. Interleaving promotes discrimination between concepts and helps students understand when each idea applies.
• Bridging Questions: Ask questions that explicitly require connections. These questions force students to retrieve prior knowledge and apply it in a new context.
• Retrieval + Integration Activities: After finishing a topic, revisit it when teaching a later topic. This leverages Retrieval Practice, which strengthens connections between knowledge nodes.
• Metacognitive Reflection: Have students reflect on how ideas connect. Reflection builds transferable mental models.

For more on this idea, read Carl Henrick’s post .

While it may seem straightforward to just post the length of the video in the title of the YouTube video, consider what you want students to do with the video. Do you want them to just watch it once? Do you want them to pause the video to take notes or complete activities? Is it a tutorial video that they are pausing to follow along with the steps? Be sure to consider the total time you expect students to devote to the video when you post a time estimate.

Reading may seem more straightforward, but our reading speed depends on a number of factors: how familiar we are with the content, the complexity of the text, and how we are engaging with the text. While the “average” reading speed is 300 words per minute, this drops considerably when there are many new concepts in the reading the learners are unfamiliar with, they are taking notes while reading, or completing activities while reading, like making annotations on the file.

If students are skimming the content in a textbook they are already familiar with, they could read about 40 pages per hour. If they are reading a journal article with many new concepts and are deeply engaging with the text, the rate slows to 7 pages per hour. Similarly, writing rates also vary based on the purpose and type of task.

Wake Forest University provides a helpful workload estimator that will do these calculations for you. For more information about the research behind the workload estimator, visit the.

So, how can you make your alt text instructive? When you craft alt text for pictures, charts, and illustrations, consider the purpose of the image. Why did you select this visual? What do you want learners to take away from the image? What is important about it in relation to your learning outcomes? Include this in the alt text rather than just a detailed description of what is on the screen.

If you need help brainstorming alt text in this way, you can try the  that will create variations of alt text for an image you upload. See this in action with an example from a biology journal article: 

To access these, follow these steps:

1. Go to your grade center in Brightspace
2. Click the Settings wheel on the top right side of the screen.
3. Click the Calculation Options tab at the top of the page.
4. Scroll down past the Grading System section to the Final Grade Released�����𳦳پ��Dz�.
5. Choose whether you would like the Final Grade to be automatically calculated or whether you would like to manually adjust the Final Grade.
6. If you would like students to be able to see their Final Grade throughout the semester, be sure to check Automatically release final grade as shown in the image below. We also recommend checking Automatically keep final grades updated.

These steps will allow your learners to keep track of their final grade throughout the semester so they can see how their assignments and efforts affect their grade. If you would like help with your grade settings, please reach out to CTL at umpi-ctl@maine.edu.

At its heart, teacher confirmation answers the student’s unspoken question: “Do I matter here?”

Instructors demonstrate willingness to engage by signaling availability, openness, and approachability. For example, inviting questions during class without signaling impatience or posting weekly instructor announcements. Instructors demonstrate recognition by showing awareness of students as individuals. For example, referencing a student’s earlier contribution in class or addressing students by name in discussion replies. Instructors demonstrate acknowledgement by validating student contributions, questions, and efforts. For example, paraphrasing student comments before responding or acknowledging effort even when answers are incomplete. Instructors demonstrate endorsement when they express belief in students’ ability to succeed. For example, framing mistakes as part of learning or statements like “This is a solid start—you’re on the right track”.

Teacher confirmation is especially critical in online and asynchronous environments, where students can easily feel invisible or disconnected. In these contexts, confirmation must be intentional and visible, often through written tone, timely feedback, and structured interaction rather than spontaneous in-class cues.

You are invited to  by April Wright, a doctoral candidate in Communication Studies at West Virginia University, that explores this concept by examining how instructors and students experience teaching behaviors that help students feel seen, heard, and valued in face-to-face and online learning environments.